Bush’s Shell Game Continues

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Tuesday, President Bush almost seemed to be his old swaggering self in a Rose Garden press conference. But it’s easy to go on the offensive when the defense has called time-out: Congress is on spring recess. Bush attacked the Democratic leadership for leaving without finishing the Iraq war funding bill before they left. The president said if Congress doesn’t step to, he may be “forced to consider cutting back on equipment, equipment repair and quality-of-life initiatives for our Guard and Reserve forces,” to ensure funding for “troops on the front lines.”

This assessment was absolute balderdash. A stop-gap funding measure has already provided $70 billion for the Iraq war. Congressional Democrats have reminded that Bush’s refusal to be more honest about the costs of the war in his own budget has forced them to approve a series of piecemeal spending packages. And last spring, the Republican-led Congress also left for spring recess without finalizing an Iraq spending package—in fact, they didn’t do so until the middle of June.

In the same press conference, Bush charged that the $70-billion supplemental spending bill is loaded with Democratic “pork.” The president’s War on Pork (WOP) began just as the Democrats took power. Nifty, huh? Yesterday, the White House unveiled an online database of all the earmarks in the 2005 fiscal year budget. Well, all the congressional earmarks, which total $19 billion. The White House neglected to include its own pet pigs, which bring the total to $48 billion.

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